In Formula One's current sanitised and restrictive world, media, teams and fans alike are willing to call moving of the smallest component revolutionary. Rear wing flap two degrees steeper? Amazing! Exhaust 10cm further back? Unbelievable! So as the actually revolutionary new McLaren is greeted with a series of "Oohs" and "Lol whuts" the internet is are alive of talk about how it will be a title winning car, leaving the rest of the teams desperately trying to shape their sidepods in the shape of smiley faces.
But is different always better? Today Patty takes a look at some of the more adventurous F1 designs of F1s past that didn't quite stack up, either copping the brunt of the governing body's ban hammer (under rule 24.1 - IT BURNS MY EYES!) or the brutal realities of physics.
The FW26 was the car that was expected to bring about the end of Ferrari's early 2000's dominance. It seemed as though Ferrari was running out of puff, barely making it over the line at the end of the 2003 season, and while Michael Schumacher was busy trashing Japanese buildings, Williams and McLaren were busy finishing off their aggressive '04 designs.
The radical component of the FW26 was of course it's front nose design, the front wing supports were extensions jutting out of the nose cone, sweeping forward gapingly to hold onto the front wing. Naturally, with these white tusks sticking out - and the large weight behind them - it was called the Walrus. Unfortunately the Walrus wasn't able to consistently challenge the dominating Ferraris over the season, and the team's only win of the year came after they reverted to a conventional front section.
The FW26 has also featured in Patty's Six of the Best...Beautiful F1 Cars, so for more on this particular Williams, go here.
2) BRM V16
If anyone ever decides to write a Formula One opera, for some odd reason or another, then there is only one car that could ever be considered to sing the bass line. The terrifying V16 was simply ear-splittingly amazing to hear at full chat as the monstrous 1.5-litre beast born of wartime engineering and questionable cylinder-based one-upmanship raced around the circuit, sounding every bit like it was cleaving the earth in half as it went. To stand next to one being revved up was to hear Satan himself climaxing down your ears.
Alas, for all of the noise, screaming, terror and power, the V16 was a bit of a shambles. Crippled by unreliability and hindered by being so powerful as to be incapable of delivering all of its potential through the flimsy 1950s-era cars it was placed in, wherever the BRM went it was a rickety combination of wheelspin and calamity. The car only entered a single official F1 event, the 1951 British Grand Prix, and after the two cars failed to set a time - or indeed complete a single lap - during qualifying, they were allowed to form up at the back of the grid if only to keep the locals in the stands happy. Not as any of the cap waving British fans were especially happy when the leading car of Reg Parnell trundled home in 5th place, five laps behind the leaders. To add to that, both drivers had suffered from inhaling petrol fumes being sent back into the cockpit throughout the race, and received burns from the heat radiating off the car's exhaust setup. Still, at least it didn't break down.
The V16 project was scrapped shortly after when the governing body switched to a 2-litre naturally aspirated formula, but that didn't stop the team returning to the comical world of 16 cylinders with their H16 project a decade later. That was rubbish too.
3) Tyrrell 025
Ken Tyrrell was always known as a bit of an innovator when it came to F1 cars, and his 1997 design was no different. The 025 featured a couple of strange aerodynamic features, both that didn't catch on for different reasons. The most striking was the X-Wing configuration sticking out either side of the cockpit. Designed to get some donwforce-generating wings out of the way of the dirty air spilling off the front wheels, this concept was actually a successful one, and many teams started introducing them over the next year. Once the FIA had picked itself off the floor after an impromptu Roflcopter fit, it decided to (thankfully) ban the wings on the grounds of "They be dangerous and uglies!".
The other point of interest on the Tyrrell was it's nosecone, somewhat defeating the purpose of raising the nose to get air underneath it towards the floor, the 025 featured a single solid pillar dropping from the nose to the front wing. The front section concept never really took off however, possibly after half the wing fell off in Monaco and the car actually got faster.
4) Lotus 80
Colin Chapman, master car designer, gave Formula One some of its most successful and cutting-edge designs. But he also served up the odd stinking plum. After the pioneering use of ground effect technology in the Lotus 79, Chapman had plans for an ultimate evolution of that technology with the new British Racing Green-clad Lotus 80. With a fully integrated ground effect system, from the nose of the car to the rear, the car was designed to run virtually wingless with the complicated underside of the car producing more than enough downforce to suck it to the ground.
Alas, as you may have noticed is becoming a trend with this particular article, it didn't work. The 80 accumulated and lost downforce though corners with all the haphazard unpredictability of a boozed-up raver staggering about the dancefloor spilling gin on the floor, meaning that drivers found it almost impossible to control. This 'porpoising' phenomenon was common in ground effect era cars, but the 80 had it really bad, pitching and bobbing around like a cast-off boat riding out a hurricane. The team quickly glued some wings on for stability, but it had no real impact on the handling, and after a few scant appearances in the 1980 season with Mario Andretti skippering the good ship Lotus, the car was dropped in favour of a return to the older 79.
5) Life L190
The Life L190 story began in 1989, with Erneso Vita trying to find an established team willing to take on his W-12 engine. Funnily enough though all the teams baulked at the idea of using an engine that was basically a V8 with another 4 cylinders dropped haphazardly on top. While perhaps intrigued at the viable Batmobile-like possibilities of a triple exhaust arrangement, the regular teams were turned off by the fact that the engine was toss. So Vita decided to create his own F1 team for 1990.
Unable to make his own car he purchased a single chassis from First Racing, chucked his single engine in it and went racing. Well, pre-qualifying. With no testing, no development, no spare parts and an engine that had half the power of the top guys the L190 was laughably slow. At Imola the team was 6 (six!) minutes slower than the fastest pre-qualifier. Predictably the car never qualified for an F1 race, it probably would've struggled in F3000, even after the change to a more conventional V8 later in the season, and F1 continued it's march towards across the board V10s.
As Red Bull should beware when working with Adrian Newey, he is clearly a man who needs to be told to work to a set timetable. After McLaren's rather soggy 2002 season, when they (and admittedly the rest of the field) were obliterated by Ferrari and their dastardly German superhero, Newey decided to go radical for 2003, and come up with the greatest Formula One car humankind had ever witnessed, the MP4-18. And, to be fair to him, maybe he did. Maybe the MP4-18 was the greatest F1 car ever. Maybe it would have lapped Spa in 35 seconds, and maybe it would have given David Coulthard that world championship he always seemed occasionally interested in failing to win. The truth is that we'll never know, because the car never actually raced in a grand prix.
As became a bit of a mini-trend in the early 2000s, the team started the year with an update of their old car, planning to introduce the MP4-18 later in the year, but the design was delayed, the final car failed the FIA's crash tests on two separate occasions, the radical new sidepods (not L-shaped, mind you) failed to cool the engine down enough to allow the car to run reliably for any length of time, and like a demented version of Stephen King's Plymouth Fury, it kept trying to kill Alex Wurz. In the end the team gave up and used the car as the basis for their 2004 contender. Which was, erm, obliterated by Ferrari and their dastardly German superhero. Oh well.
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